Kenyan firm assures Internet clients

April 27, 2010

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By Evelyn Njoroge, NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 27- Kenya Data Networks (KDN) has assured its customers that they will not be affected by ongoing repairs of a fault on the submarine fibre optic cable in the Mediterranean.

KDN’s Chief Marketing Officer Vincent Wang’ombe said the firm had provided alternative submarine capacity through The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) and added that all possible measures have been taken to ensure that communication flow is smooth despite the ongoing repairs.

He said KDN is fully backed up by a redundancy route through TEAMS from Fujariah to Singapore, where KDN can access the international gate pass through South Asia.

"Through the use of TEAMS to Fujariah and from Fujariah to Singapore, we have an alternative route which enables our clients to be up," the manager added.

The repairs which were to end on Monday are now expected to be completed on April 30.The cable ship has started cutting grapnel drive.

The original route which is affected is SEACOM to London via SEA ME WE 4 from Fujariah to Marseille which connects to the London gate pass. The submarine cable had a break shunt fault on the fibre pair in the Mediterranean sea close to Alexandria harbour.

Many Internet users have been experiencing connectivity problems since the fault was reported over the weekend.

“Unfortunately it implies that for a short time, power will have to shut down on the cable system. The required time to do the job is mainly depending on the local weather conditions, availability of the zone,” Mr Wang\’ombe said.

A statement from SEACOM said it is not possible to have a precise chronology of the duration of the sequence and as such users should brace themselves for longer periods of connectivity interruptions.

SEACOM is currently using the SEA ME WE 4 cable to connect the East Coast to Europe, until our full solution that involves the crossing of Egypt via the Red Sea (still in the process of being completed) will be finalised June 2010.